The Autzine Team win youth participation award for Autzine!

The Autzine Team at Suffolk New College has been announced as the South regional winner of the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS) Young Partners Award for their excellent work in youth participation.

The award, funded by BIG Lottery, celebrates and recognises youth participation and what young people can achieve through working in equal partnership with adults. This year’s ceremony, which was planned, organised and hosted by members of NCVYS’s national youth forum, ENVOY, brought together 12 shortlisted youth organisations across the country to celebrate the fantastic work they’ve achieved.

We went through three stages before we made it onto the final shortlist for the awards. The awards were divided into four categories (North, South, Midlands and National) and each category had three shortlisted organisations on the final shortlist with one being a winner in each section.

The prestigious ceremony was held on Saturday 15 October 2011 at Glazier’s Hall in London, with over 150 young people in attendance, including, young people from the organisations, young performers, photographers and filmmakers. We received several prizes including a grant from NCVYS towards developing their project, a year’s free NCVYS membership and prizes from sponsors of the event including a PGL activity day.

Matt Ellis part of the Autzine team said: “I'm so happy Autzine won, everyone is special and I don’t think it’s shown enough and its projects like ours that give them a voice. Everyone at the awards deserved to win, because all the projects are taking that voice and doing something with it to  help the wider community understand that young people are part of the solution and not always the problem, thank you for rewarding us for OUR way of showing how to use youth's voice.”